but these things, they cost you
by nyxovertop
Summary: Aladdin is seventeen and thin and has gone hungry for the past week. He needs food. (In retrospect, he should have just stayed hungry.)


When he was younger, he got hurt. It didn't happen very often, the occasional slip-up of the feet when Aladdin was sprinting straight ahead, a glance behind his shoulder that lasted a second too long.

Or, (these things, they cost you) Aladdin learns the hard way.

The bazaar is unusually crowded. Not with people, sellers, and the like, but with something far worse: guards. Clad in white and metal, Agrabah's emblem stitched into their vests. Aladdin counts twenty one when he's crouching by the window, minutes after waking up. That number's too high already, but Aladdin is seventeen and thin and has gone hungry for the past week. He needs food. His stomach growls, in agreement. He's run out of his emergency, just-in-case-of-starvation dates, there's not a crumb of stale bread hidden beneath his pillow. So he has to go.

Tells Abu to stay. Guards might not recognize Aladdin's face if they glimpse it passing by, but a monkey traveling at his heels is a dead giveaway.

(In retrospect, he should have just stayed hungry.)

He shimmies down the building's massive side, lands with a plop on all fours. The dust rises and he chokes back a cough, jumps to his feet. There's dust on his pants. Breathless, Aladdin waits.

If Agrabah is a river, then the city's people are the fish, they swim downstream with goods and spices, blending together, and all Aladdin has to do is wait for a good opening and-

He dives. Falls into step with a short, wrinkly woman to his right. She moves towards a stand of fruit, and Aladdin follows her. He's not young enough to pass as her grandson, (a trick he's played quite successfully in the past) but she tromps off down the road moments later, so it doesn't matter anyways.

The fruit stays, though. Looms, hundreds of brightly colored spheres of apples, melons, plums, and dates, lemons and grapefruit.

Aladdin stares.

From the look on his face, the piles of fruit may as well have been mountains of gold, and were far more precious. He blinks, realizes he has been drooling. His stomach rumbles.

He steps forward. The man behind the fruit is tall, with a scruffy beard and a purple robe. He raises an eyebrow at Aladdin's order (ten plums) but turns to grab them nonetheless.

Aladdin pays, drops some coins (he'd snitched these from the old lady) into the man's rough, calloused hand. They disappear into the purple robe like a magic trick, and that's when Aladdin shoves him. For anyone who saw this, it looks like a young boy tripping into the fruit vendor. It's what if feels like, too, and by the time the vendor realizes what's just happened, he can only yell.

"Guards!"

But Aladdin is gone. Tearing through the streets with his pockets full of whatever he could grab, along with the two apples plus the coins. The fruits weight him down, his balance tipped a little to the left. His feet hit the dirt and he hears, distinctly, the words 'there' and 'stop him' yelled. Which, okay, he gets it. He's a thief, after all.

Runs faster. Blood is racing in his ears, he's racing down the street. There are guards at his heels, curses swinging from their lips. Aladdin dives into an alley, hits a hard right, twists left, and looks back once: are they still following him?

Bam! His head collides with a solid, wooden beam. It feels like a massive headache that went from a five to eleven, someone just bash his brains into the pavement. His vision wobbles. Aladdin goes down. The guards slow to a halt. The closest one leans into Aladdin's line of sight, and hisses, low and harshly, 'bottom-feeder,' right before he kicks Aladdin in the knee.

The sound is like the snapping of a thousand trees, pain erupts in his kneecap and zips up his hip in needles. Aladdin moans. It is ten times worse than the pain in his head, the guard's boot was plated with some sort of metal. He gulps back another yell. He can't stop trying, though.

The guard raises his leg again, and Aladdin rolls. Just in time, the boot crashes down on emptiness, in the dust. The guard's face contorts in fury, but Aladdin isn't there to see it. He's rushing down the street, as fast as his shattered knee will carry him.

Left. Right. Duck down. There are screams behind his ear, the guards stomp around and people flee. Aladdin blocks the noises out. All he thinks about is home.

Home.

Home.

Home, he makes it. Climbing up the beams, he's three times slower than he usually is. He's sluggish, everything is fuzzy. His head feels like it's been filled with mosquitoes: biting, buzzing, a whistling inside his thoughts that makes it hard to think straight. He sits, or tries to sit, on a pillow, the one furthest from the window, and ends up collapsing into it all at once. His knee burns, Aladdin thinks its broken, and the pillow is gratefully soft. He'd picked it off the local vendor about a month ago. Now, the trim is falling and the color is dusty with grime. He doesn't care.

Somewhere above his head, Abu chatters. Aladdin reaches into his pocket, hisses tightly when the movement twitches his knee. Abu stills, curious. From his pocket, Aladdin pulls out five dates. Then a plum.

He smiles.

And life goes on.


End file.
